Standing room only for Plutonic meeting

Dan MacLennan
Courier-Islander
Wednesday, February 04, 2009

It was standing room only to hear first-hand about Plutonic Power's plans
for Bute Inlet Monday
night.-1acf-417f-ac0c-192ad0df93e0/crowdfeb4isl.jpg?size=l>  
CREDIT: Photo: Dan MacLennan 
It was standing room only to hear first-hand about Plutonic Power's
plans for Bute Inlet Monday night. 

A standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 people packed the Quinsam Centre
hall Monday night; their numbers clearly demonstrating local interest and
concern for Plutonic Power's massive Bute Inlet Hydro Electric Project;
their comments reflecting another debate between jobs and the environment.

Vancouver-based Plutonic and its partner General Electric want to generate
1,027 megawatts - enough to power 300,000 homes they claim - by building 17
run-of-river generating plants on tributaries to the Homathco, Southgate and
Orford Rivers.

The proposal is massive not only in scope but also in cost. Plutonic CEO
Donald McInnes said it will cover 1,540 hectares (3,711 acres), requiring
440 kilometres (275 miles) of transmission line right-of-way as well as
access roads. He estimated the total cost of the project in the $3.5 billion
range.

After responding last November to BC Hydro's request for power proposals,
Plutonic is now in the early stages of federal and provincial environmental
assessment processes. Monday's meeting was the third after meetings last
month in Powell River and Sechelt intended to help the Environmental
Assessment Office set terms of reference for the assessment.

A majority of speakers voiced serious concerns about the proposal if not
outright opposition to the concept. Strathcona Regional District Area C
Director Jim Abram called for more meetings and voiced "deep concerns"
about the proposal and the process. He said consultation with local
government to date was "pathetic" and he called for more public meetings.

"How can you propose a 450-kilometre-long linear clear cut in an area that
depends on the scenic corridor for the livelihood of its residents and the
very existence of the creatures that live there," he said. "This is
unimaginable."

The meeting also drew some of the now familiar opponents from the provincial
stage. Rafe Mair from the Save Our Rivers Society said the process was
backwards because the people had yet to vote on an energy policy. Perennial
eco-warrior Vicky Husband, senior advisor to the Watershed Watch Salmon
Society, said public meetings should have been offered in Victoria and
Vancouver because this is a matter of provincial concern.

But most of the speakers were local.

"I'm not in favor of these projects," said Mike Gage, chair of the Campbell
River Salmon Foundation. "You talk about rehabilitating logging roads. Your
plans are to bring standards from 150-tonne capacity to 300-tonne. That's
not rehabilitating, that's a major rebuild. Your standards are going to
leave huge impacts on those valleys."

Others wanted to know how much water would be diverted for generation
purposes and how far it would be diverted.

There were numerous concerns about visual impacts. McInnes said the water
license would not permit export of water.

North Island MLA Claire Trevena called for a moratorium on independent power
production (IPP) until there's an overview of its provincial impacts.

Fresh off the federal campaign trail, Quadra's Green Party candidate Philip
Stone climbed on for the coming provincial vote, telling McInnes the project
was anything but green.

But amid all the opposition ran a current of support from no small number in
the audience, including First Nations members.

Daisy Hill, 72, of the Homalco First Nation, lectured the audience, saying
the land involved had belonged to her people for generations.

"For a change, we thought that we were going to be able to get something for
our land from this Plutonic Power because there were supposed to be jobs and
other things happening for us," she said. "Our people are really in poverty
and this was an opportunity for them to finally get out of being so poor and
have jobs and training. We were very happy to hear something positive was
going to happen for us.

"Then I come here and I hear all of these negative things from everybody.
You people probably have had jobs all your lives, have your own homes, have
everything that you need. We don't have anything.
People, the majority are on welfare. It's sad to say that.

"Maybe there are some things that need to be explored so that they don't
hurt the water and they don't hurt the animals. We want to make sure that
doesn't happen because we value those things."

Mavis Kok said Plutonic's Toba Inlet project currently under construction
has been good for the Klahoose First Nation.

"This has been a positive endeavor for us," she said. "We have over two
dozen people attending college and university. That is the upside of it.
There's always going to be pros and cons. There's always going to be
somebody that disagrees, but from this standpoint I say thank you to
Plutonic Power."

Lannie Keller said the public can't be the watchdog for the process because
there's a flood of proposals.

She called for the province to call a moratorium. She said the Homalco have
worked hard to protect the environment.

"It's a shame on our society that they have to consider trading their rivers
and their environment for money so that their youth can go to school and so
they can have jobs," she said. "It's shameful. We don't need to sell our
rivers. We've used up our forests. Our salmon are gone.
Let's not sell out our rivers."

McInnes acknowledged fish impacts were a big issue, particularly in the
valley bottoms.

"Our general guiding principle on site selection is the avoidance of fish
habitat," he said. "All of our powerhouse sites are above confirmed salmon
habitat. The intake structures are way above any productive salmon habitat.
Where possible, we're just looking for the environment where there isn't
productive fish habitat at all."

He urged people to check out the company website at www.plutonic.ca for more
information.

After the meeting, McInnes said he hadn't heard a lot of opposition to the
proposal from the community.

"The majority of the people who are here tonight that were being vocal,
they're never going to change their opinion," he said. "To a large extent,
their opposition to the project has nothing to do with the project. It's the
concept of public versus private ownership.
Ideologically, a lot of people think we shouldn't have the right to develop
and a lot of people think it's fine. But the people who think it's fine,
they're not at this meeting. They're at home after a hard day at work,
having dinner and seeing their kids."

He said many in the audience had "followed us to the other meetings so that
they can stand up in a public forum and try to get people riled up."

How riled up people will become has yet be demonstrated, but that date could
come later this year when Plutonic formally applies for an Environmental
Assessment Certificate, possibly by September. That will trigger a larger
public consultation process and more public meetings.

Recommendations to government from the environmental assessment processes
aren't expected until sometime next year.

© Courier-Islander (Campbell River) 2009

Data on BC Hydro power production

This is for each fiscal year:

• Year....BC Hydro....Consumption....BC Hydro
• ..........Production ........................Shortfall
• 2008 52268 GW/h 57583 GW/h 5315 GW/h
• 2007 45536 GW/h 56108 GW/h 10572 GW/h
• 2006 47225 GW/h 55654 GW/h 8429 GW/h
• 2005 42382 GW/h 54001 GW/h 11619 GW/h
• 2004 44988 GW/h 53132 GW/h 8144 GW/h
• 2003 48075 GW/h 51490 GW/h 3415 GW/h
• 2002 43663 GW/h 50821 GW/h 7158 GW/h
• 2001 49885 GW/h 51251 GW/h 1366 GW/h
• 2000 51581 GW/h 49498 GW/h (2083) GW/h

So where are some of the BC Hydro production differences coming from? In fiscal 2008 there was more water available for production. Before 2003 the Burrard thermal plant produced up to 3974 GW/h per year, since then it has produced about 150 to 600 GW/h per year.

Since 2001, demand for power in BC has surpassed the ability for BC Hydro to produce the power. The last year in which BC Hydro produced enough hydro electrical power for BC needs was in 1998.

How has BC Hydro met the shortfall? In large part through long term private power contracts. In the late 1990s this was about 8000 GW/h per year. Now it is about 10 500 GW/h per year. The surplus has always been sold by BC Hydro.

In the late 1990s BC Hydro purchased about 2000 GW/h per year of IPP power. Now they buy about 7500 GW/h per year.

Oppistion to Green Power in BC

I am getting more and more depressed at the opposition in BC to green power. The small scale run of the river hydro projects are among the greenest sources of energy on the planet but yet there is this strong opposition to them being developed. I am going to try and address the issues raised by people opposed to the projects.

Anyone that is concerned about climate change and opposes these projects seems to me to be not functioning in a rational manner.

This column in the Province shows us that Tseporah Berman clearly gets the need for the projects.

I am going to address the following over a number of days:

1. The construction of the projects is environmentally damaging
2. This is wholesale privatization of water
3. A huge number of creeks are being staked
4. The projects will drain the creeks
5. The projects infringe on Aboriginal Title and Rights
6. The public is not being consulted
7. This should not be done by the private sector
8. BC Hydro is paying too much for the power
9. BC Hydro produces enough power
   
10. We do need more power, we achieve everything through conservation

BC Citizens for Green Energy

BC Citizens for Green Energy is a group of people lobbying for more green energy production in BC, specifically they are strongly supporting run of the river hydro and wind power.

The group is clearly from the business side of the political spectrum and are also quite scrappy in taking on people opposing green power projects. This makes them quite different than the BC Sustainable Energy Association, who seem to be completely avoiding the debate about green power projects.

The campaign against green power projects in BC is getting weird. There is a wildly strong NIMBY thing going, there is also anti-business thing going on, and there is finally a strain wanting us to not use more power. Very little of the campaign against the green power projects makes much sense, but there really is no one taking on the wild and bizarre accusations against the projects.

If the goal is to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted by power production, there are few things better than the host of run of the river power projects suggested for BC. Without these, realistically there will need to be natural gas power plants in BC, site C and coal plants. At the moment we are dependent on power from Alberta and the US to make up the shortfall at home, this can not go on forever.

The campaign being mounted by groups like Western Canada Wilderness Committee needs to be examined for the implications of what they are saying. If WCWC, and related people, get their wish, the carbon footprint of people in BC will rise dramatically, each Kw/H of imported power adds about 500 grams of CO2. Right now we import close to 15% of the power we use, a CO2 impact of about 750kg per household, or about 1.8 megatonnes. If this rises to 25%, that will add another 500kg per household.

Joint Canada-US Approach on Climate Policy Needed: C.D. Howe Institute

Toronto, Feb.3, 2009 – A joint Canada-US approach to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is needed to minimize the negative impact on Canada’s competitiveness, says a study released today by the C.D. Howe Institute.

In Pricing Greenhouse Gas Emissions: The Impact on Canada’s Competitiveness, authors Chris Bataille, Benjamin Dachis and Nic Rivers note there is a growing consensus that if serious action is to be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, a price must be applied to emissions through a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax. The authors look at a number of scenarios of how Canada’s climate policy might coexist with the rest of the world, how certain sectors are likely to be affected by carbon pricing and what governments can do about it.

Overall, they find that competitiveness impacts associated with climate change policy in Canada are likely to be relatively small for most sectors of the economy, with the exception of the following sectors: oil and gas extraction and processing, pulp and paper, metal smelting, chemicals, cement and lime production.

One concern, they note, is that measures Canada might take to reduce GHG emissions may be partly offset by the relocation of Canadian industries to countries that lack tough climate change policies – an effect known as emissions “leakage.” Such leakage, they find, would be relatively small: for every 5 megatonnes of CO₂ that is reduced by Canadian industry, only 1 tonne would be leaked abroad. Any leakage would also be primarily to the United States, rather than to developing countries, meaning that a joint Canada-US approach would largely eliminate both the potential for leakage and overall competitiveness issues.

For the study go to: http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/commentary_280.pdf

For further information contact:

Benjamin Dachis,

Policy Analyst, C.D. Howe Institute,

416-865-1904;

Chris Bataille,

Director, M.K. Jaccard and Associates,

604-683-1259;

Nic Rivers,

Trudeau Scholar,

School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University,

604-683-1452.

Getting Serious about Idling

It is amazing how much fuel is used by idling vehicles. One of the biggest source is from drive throughs, about 200 000 000 litres of gasoline are burned in BC by cars in drive throughs. The time has come for the provincial government to ban all drive throughs.

Think about, 460 000 tonnes of CO2 emissions in BC from cars at drive throughs. That is the same as the emissions of 30 000 people in BC.

The bottomline

I am still not convinced of the degree of potential problems global warming could cause in the next generations. For many regions of the world the warming will be beneficial and globally the increase in precipitation will improve the lot for people in most of the world. If we are concerned about stopping warming, we have some clear limits to consider in the process.

With this global slowdown, there are numerous people expressing happiness at the reduced rate CO2 will be emitted into the atmosphere. I saw a letter to this effect in the Times Colonist today. Note, this is not a reduction in CO2, simply a slow down in how fast emissions are increasing.

Clearly there is a limit to how much CO2 and other greenhouse gasses the atmosphere can contain before we do have a dramatic changes to our climate. The idea of slowing the growth of greenhouse gasses is a waste of time and energy because it is not going to make any difference.

If this is an issue that matters, the long term goal has to be a defacto "budget" of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. At the moment we are have a large debt in the sky and rising servicing costs for this this GHG debt. We are running a deficit each year at the moment and increasingly so each year.

Eventually we have to become not only carbon neutral, but carbon negative. We have to pull out more CO2 from the sky than is put out each year.

Realistically the only solution is to tax GHG emissions and then to spend all this money on carbon capture and storage. At the moment the tax would not raise enough to make things carbon negative, but over time as carbon capture and storage gets cheaper, the amount of GHG captured will be more than what is emitted.

If there were an open bidding process from the government for capture and storage of carbon - a call for carbon - and the government would buy the cheapest 12 000 000 tonnes in BC, there would be a large number of companies bid on this and offer to do it cheaply. The first round may not be as cheap as the future, but eventually the prices will fall as the technologies develop.

12 000 000 tonnes in BC works out to about 20% of what each person contributes in CO2 per year. We will be collecting enough through the carbon tax in a few years to fund the capture and storage of that amount of CO2.